Iran Builds Supercomputer From Banned AMD Parts 778
Stony Stevenson writes with the news that, despite a ban on US PC hardware, Iranian techs have built an enormously powerful supercomputer from 216 AMD processors. The Linux-cluster machine has a 'theoretical peak performance of 860 gig-flops'. "The disclosure, made in an undated posting on [the University of] Amirkabir's Web site, brought an immediate response Monday from AMD, which said it has never authorized shipments of products either directly or indirectly to Iran or any other embargoed country."
Not too hard (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh noes! (Score:1, Insightful)
The breathless panic in the American media about everything Iran does is getting a little old.
"Enormously Powerful" (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what the story is here...
-Chris
Supercomputer == WMD (Score:1, Insightful)
Silly Iranians. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do all that work to achieve a theoretical peak performance of 860 GFlops, when a IBM Cell [wikipedia.org] processor has a theoretical peak around 1000 GFlops?
My point is that the theoretical maximum speed rating, all by itself, doesn't fully characterize the relevant performance of a given computer for the computations which it's intended to perform.
Or maybe the Iranians really should just make a trip to Best Buy...
Good for them (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably using it to simulate... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Oh noes! (Score:3, Insightful)
They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, Iran is a scapegoat for US politicians. They can't handle, politically, the fact that their foreign policy initiatives fail consistently in the Middle East. They need a shadowy, vageuly evil figure to pit the fear of the electorate against the critical thinking of the electorate, which is the side that says invasions, coups, and exploitation aren't working. If it weren't for the Iran, the Iraq war would have zero political viability. Instead, Iran provides a "threat" so it becomes politically viable to call for indefinite troop deployment.
This is a most bizarre case of symbiotism. Ahmadinejade is pretty much an idiot (see no gays in Iran comment) who doesn't really have all that special of a record. Is he a threat to world civilization, probably not. He does, however, say enough dumb things that he gives political capital to his enemies in the west. His enemies in the west return the favor by imposing sanctions, threatening pre-emptive attacks, etc. It's a twisted quid pro quo kind of thing. He gets to appeal to Iranian nationalism against the threat of American attack, and the White House gets to appeal to Americans' fears of an evil terrorist state with nukes and a supercomputer.
Moral of the story is that fear, uncertainty, and doubt breeds political power. Any time someone tells you to be afraid, take it with a grain of salt.
Re:"Enormously Powerful" (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure what the story is here...
-Chris
You cannot ban commodities, it just doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that you can somehow 'ban' a country from getting ahold of a commodity is ludicrious and stupid. The only way you could really do that would be to effectively seal and close their borders militarily and embargo them to the point that you controlled all of their travel and trade outside of their borders. Good luck with that.
Could someone explain (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You cannot ban commodities, it just doesn't wor (Score:3, Insightful)
Those are easier to interdict because they are bulk products. A shipping container of computer parts is small and easy to send most anywhere.
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to Godwin too quickly, but similar sentiment was expressed when a corporal turned wall paper hanger gained control of a govt. in the early 20th century. Sometimes it is easier to nip these things in the bud, and other times you just make something worse.
Cause for concern (Score:4, Insightful)
Were Iran to test a nuclear weapon in real life, they would get noticed pretty quickly (the seismic readings would see to that), and a preemptive strike would soon follow. (Once there is no doubt that the Iranians are working on nuclear weapons, there'd be little resistance to ensure that they don't succeed; it's not only the US, Europe and Israel who are worried, but their Sunni Islamic neighbours, regarded by them as apostates, are none too comfortable with a nuclear-armed Iran. Add to that Ahmadine-Jihad's support of the concept of martyrdom (the Iranian government actually recruits suicide bombers for jihadist attacks against US/Jewish/Sunni interests), and you've got the sort of nuclear power that can't be trusted to do the sensible thing and sit on its nukes as a defensive weapon of last resort.
As such, supercomputing power of this sort would be vitally important in running nuclear simulations and perfecting a bomb.
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems he gets mistranslated a lot too, like about the wiping off the map, or about there not being gays like in the US. Maybe he meant as in with their own parades and being in everybody's face... although I hear that the Iranians watching also laughed at that one. I don't know, but it sounds to me like an Al Gore "invented the internet" kind of spin.
It just doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Most US nuclear weapons were designed using computers under 1 MIPS. Even the fusion bombs. About 40 years ago, I was visiting a UNIVAC 1105 installation (the biggest all-vacuum-tube computer ever built as a commercial product, designed when Gen. Leslie Groves was at UNIVAC), and they'd done some work on bomb design. It took about two days per run, and they'd run the program at the same time some other location was running it. Every three hours, the console typewriter would print out a checksum, and they'd phone the other location to see if it matched. If not, they had to back up to the last checkpoint tape and restart.
This huge machine was comparable in power to a PC/AT with an FPU chip; a good 1985 desktop.
The silly thing about export controls on computers is that the U.S. Government keeps increasing the control threshold for "supercomputers". The current threshold is 750 gigaflops, which is a few racks of servers. In 1995, it was 2 gigaflops, or about where a low-end PC is today. Back in 1987, there was a big flap when Iran tried to get hold of a VAX 8600, which is about 0.005 gigaflops. But bomb design isn't getting any more difficult.
Any modern laptop can do the calculations necessary for bomb design. Deal with it.
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if America is basing foreign policy on hypothetical situations that are contradicted by real intelligence reports / common sense, just imagine what Iran could do IF they had enough unicorn poo gold to destabilize the dollar blah blah Amero blah SuperInterstateHighway the width of Manhattan blah blah tin foil hats blah Ron Paul?
They have guns. And yet they don't shoot across the Iraqi border with reckless abandon. And North Korea has the bomb, and yet South Korea still steadfastly refuses to be a glass ashtray.
Hmmmm.
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, out of curiosity, how is it a discussion of equals right now in the M.E. when Israel has nuclear weapons and no one else does (that we know of)?
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
because they are a theocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
that doesn't bother you?
whether pro-usa, or anti-usa, or pro-israel, or anti-israel, this should bother you, regardless
i'm sorry, but in this world, very little concepts frighten me more than a theocracy with nukes
and i'm not talking about the loose propagandistic label of "theocracy" one might apply to say, the usa, because the current president (who will soon be gone) is a conservative southern baptist. i'm talking about an actual, stated, as clearly implied in the constitution, theocracy. as in, our government serves god and those unelected grumpy old men over there interpret what he wants. the real deal, a real genuine clearly stated theocracy
any rational human being should feel threatened by a theocracy with nukes. regardless of any of your other concerns in the middle east, or any of your other politics in general
http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/Government/constitution.html [iranonline.com]
Re:Before you panic (Score:3, Insightful)
Easier to swap out programs (even if it means interrupting a test) than it is hiding a computer.
Just sayin as a counterpoint...
iran is a very proud country (Score:3, Insightful)
ok, fine, i respect that independence and fierce pride
however, i don't think i could be very proud of myself if my tech consisted of stuff i stole from my archnemesis. national pride i think must rest on something stronger than "ha ha! i stole your stuff!"
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:because they are a theocracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:2, Insightful)
What you just said is complete nonsense to anyone who has listened to him.
216 unlicensed copies of Vista--BOMBS AWAY!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Less than reputable resellers in the world?? (Score:2, Insightful)
They just recently came out of a revolution which got rid of a dictatorship (people fighting for their freedom, you might have heard about it...). I would give them some time to get to a stable situation and to develop a democratic tradition.
Fact is that they already have more women in their parliament than most western countries.
Oh, and I would not hesitate to sell them all the CPUs they desire. This is because I live in a free country and neither US propaganda nor US law applies to me.
(P.S.: Do not ask. We do not want you.)
Re:Not too hard (Score:3, Insightful)
These bans are utterly unenforceable.
"Enormously powerful" my butt... (Score:3, Insightful)
So the Iranians strung together 216 previous-gen 2GHz Opterons... Big freaking deal. This is not exactly rocket science; it's all off-the-shelf commodity stuff, both hardware and software. I know several university research groups that have more computing power than that, let alone supercomputer centers.
If they field a machine in the tens of teraflops, *then* there might be some cause for alarm...
Re:Bush is relieved... (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately many western US-friendly nations are exposed to that problem too, though in a different way (corporate+military vs military alone espionage).
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:2, Insightful)
What the poster was saying is that most of Israel's neighbors have had an official government policy in the past 10 years or so (many still do) of wanting the eradication of Israel, and some of them apply that to all Israelis as well. Just to be clear: we are talking about the state sponsoring (on paper) of genocide here. The politicians of those countries may just be pandering with those words, but the pandering has the price of real lives lost in this conflict, and generations of time left wasted.
And on the whole nuclear weapons bit. Yes we are the only country that has used nuclear weapons is vastly overblown in my mind. Not because the strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not horrific, but because in the scale of horrors done during WWII they are not the worst. If you just concentrate on bombing during WWII then you have to realize that a single night of the fire bombing of Tokyo killed 100,000 people. That is more people than were killed in Nagasaki, and more than died directly in the blast in Hiroshima (more died later, but then that number has to compete with all of the bombing raids on Tokyo).
The nuclear blasts were horrific, but were not the worst things in the war by far. And when you start to open the comparisons out a bit farther, there are true genocides out there that make the wartime atrocities pale by comparison.
israel isn't a theocracy (Score:3, Insightful)
but do it for valid reasons, not propaganda
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:5, Insightful)
"because they are a theocracy" So? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are the leaders of a theocracy any less motivated by desire for wealth and power? Are they more suicidal than a theocrat, or any other politician, ruling a democracy?
I haven't seen anything in your argument showing why a theocracy is more of a danger with nukes beyond using "theocracy" as a magic fearphrase like "think-of-the-children" etc.
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:3, Insightful)
ehem, isn't israel "a bunch of religious radicals with nuclear bombs" too? actually... i'd say that a country that even remotely considers discussion of creationist views as part of their science curricula a bunch of religiuos radicals... why is Iran religious radicalness worse than israel's or USA's?
The point is, we do know that Israel has nukes, and they indeed do have a large portion of religious radicals. It is interesting to note that despite this, and despite the considerably hostile atmosphere surrounding Israel's presence in the Middle East, they have not used them.
I don't say this in defense of Israel. I say it because we have a tangible example of a government that many people say is "just as bad" as the Iranian government, and yet it hasn't blown the Middle East into tiny chunks. If Israel can exercise such restraint, why can't Iran?
No they're not pushing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They are the Boogeymen! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not too hard (Score:4, Insightful)
From:
The Iranian Consulate
50 Kensington Court
Kensington
London
W8 5DB
To:
PC World
47/53 Kensington High Street
Kensington
London
W8 5ED
0.2 mi - Quite a bit less than a 5 minute walk.
Head east on Kensington Ct (259 ft)
Turn left to stay on Kensington Ct (240 ft)
Turn left at A315/Kensington Rd &
Continue to follow A315 (0.1 mi)
Not really that far, There's even a McDonalds just a little further on after PC World if you need a snack before you head back.
Of course on the downside you would end up paying over the odds for anything you buy....
Re:Bush is relieved... (Score:0, Insightful)
No offense but the moderation system here is a joke.
It's only common courtesy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cause for concern (Score:2, Insightful)
Really? I haven't seen that position paper. What I have read about is that the weak president of Iran has made mutterings that can be interpreted that way; but being that I'm not fluent in Farsi, it's hard to judge. Either side could be lying (and at least one is) in a propaganda game.
Additionally, "Ahmadine-Jihad" doesn't have the authority to launch a war of any kind - at worst he can use black-ops to try to instigate one, but foreign policy is ultimately in the hands of the Ayatollah. What kind of nutcase he is, I'm not privy to, but have seen no evidence of "insane" actions in their foreign policy as of yet. Offensive, yes. Justifying radical means by Israel and the greater Jewish community, yes; but none so far by the US government, except as it is in the US interest to support an ally. And we see how this tough talk actually gets played out in practice - Menem, the ex-Argentinian president who appears to have had his hand in one of the most dastardly terrorist actions in recent memory continues to run around the world quite happily. Those kinds of guys are a real threat, but as part of an elite club continue to commit crimes in perfect freedom.
But mostly your posting is incoherent nonsense, the same propaganda that can be used against almost any state. If we are to really handle Iran, rather than let the ME situation continue to deteriorate, it really is time for everyone to start dismissing these kinds of ramblings and really think about how to integrate Iran into the international system.
Instead, half the people in the US believe these kinds of fantasies, rather than seeing where Iran really is our opponent, where Iran could be (and has been) our ally (Afghanistan), and what a reasonable foreign policy would be.
So the question is, do you not know what you're taking about, or are you simply mindlessly repeating propaganda?
Re:it's a theocracy (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Should have bought Playstations (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty damn sure they didn't have supercomputers when they built the Trinity test bomb. In fact, your average cell phone is probably more powerful than the combined computing power of all the computers in existence back in 1945. Hydrogen bombs came not long thereafter (in fact, I believe Teller came up with the basic design while the Manhattan project was still underway), and are therefore similarly non-computationally-expensive to design.
I'm sure there are a few exciting, new complicated nuke designs that require supercomputers, but supercomputers simply are not a factor in determining whether a country can go nuclear or not--raw materials, refining machinery, and scientists are.
Re:Should have bought Playstations (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bush is relieved... (Score:2, Insightful)
there, fixed that for you.
Elections don't change anything else they would be banned.
that aside, thanks for the informative post.